“I went to Carnival in Braunschweig once,” she offered impulsively. “With my troop—my BDM cluster.” As she spoke, she remembered the parade—the colorful floats of costumed dancers and local school groups, business associations, and social clubs. There were giant papier-mâché caricatures of knights and princesses, tableaus of political figures and folktale characters. And everywhere the smells of beer, crisp potato pancakes, sausages, and sugary donuts. She had gone with a group of classmates and they had schemed to meet their future husbands. Schoduvel, they called Carnival in Braunschweig—“Scare the Devil.” The city had seemed huge and magical and dangerous.
“Ah.” Muller smiled, and Benita felt him relax. He leaned back against the wood he had stacked.
“It was wonderful,” she said. “Did you go every year?”
“When I was a boy.”
“And not after?”
“And sometimes after.” He smiled again, now looking sheepish.
“Of course!” she said. “Why wouldn’t you?! Did you ride the Ferris wheel?”
“Always.”
“It was amazing, wasn’t it?” She remembered the rocking, and the exhilarating sense of danger that was not actually danger at all. “I would have done it a million times if I could.”
“And then come down for a Weissbier and a plate of Kartoffelpuffer.”
“Exactly.” Benita smiled.
Companionable silence passed between them.
“I was the Carnival princess in Frühlinghausen once,” she said.
Muller raised his eyebrows and tipped an imaginary cap, bowing his head. “Your Highness.”
“Did you have one in Braunschweig?”
“The mayor’s wife.” He puffed out his cheeks. “Too fat to ride in the parade carriage.”
Benita laughed. The dragonflies darted into the sun, frightened by the sound.
“It feels impossible now, doesn’t it?” she said, and then wished she hadn’t. The words invited melancholy. “Never mind.” She shook her head. “I should start back or Marianne will worry.” She extended her hand to Muller. “Will you help me stand?”
He bowed slightly. “Gnädige princess.”
At dinner Benita found the courage to mention Herr Muller.
It was a change from their usual topic of conversation: whom Marianne had received a letter from, and where they were . . . She was engaged in a questlike search for other widows like Benita—the lost wives and mothers and faithful secretaries (a category Benita found deeply suspicious) of Connie and Albrecht’s fellow conspirators. Even now, with the country’s infrastructure in shambles, Marianne managed to exchange letters and telegrams with friends and acquaintances from all over. Mostly these were women Benita didn’t know or had felt snubbed by because she was so young, so uneducated, so unfitting a bride for Connie. But there were others still missing from Marianne’s careful catalog: the wives of men on the outskirts of the group, beyond Marianne’s social circles.
“How long will the Americans keep their prisoners?” Benita managed to ask before Marianne could get started on the subject.
Marianne glanced up from serving the soup: a tasteless cabbage and carrot and potato that neither she nor Benita knew how to improve.
“I don’t know,” Marianne said. “I think they’ll be sent to France for the rebuilding.”
“The terrible ones,” Elisabeth said.
“Really?” Fritz asked, wide eyed. The boy had a grim fascination with all the most horrible details emerging about the Nazis—psychopaths like Josef Kramer, the Beast of Belsen, as they now referred to him, a man who had personally gassed eighty Jews for his collection of skeletons.
“Elisabeth,” Marianne scolded, “you have no idea who they send where. Don’t give your brother wrongheaded facts.” She turned to Benita. “Why do you ask?”
“I was just thinking of Herr Muller,” Benita ventured.
“Ah!” Marianne frowned. “I haven’t asked Peterman how long he’ll be here—but we can get by without him, certainly.”
“Of course.” Benita nodded.
“They can’t keep those prisoners forever,” Marianne continued. “Too expensive. They’ll need them to get back to work.”
“But I like Herr Muller,” Fritz said petulantly. “I don’t want him to be released.”
Elisabeth shot her brother a look. “Do you hear what you’re saying? You sound like Rapunzel’s stepmother. If you like someone, you should want them to be free.”
The next week, a heat wave settled over Burg Lingenfels, a shaggy animal brushing against the hills, panting along the river, quieting the birds and making the castle sweat. The ditches were alive with milkweed, nettles, and creeping phlox. In the warmth, the forest looked soft and dense, a black lump against blue sky.
Benita decided she was well enough to walk down to the farm of Herr Kellerman, the castle caretaker, for the eggs he supplied. She had imagined going with Martin, walking down the hillside with her long-lost son, continuing their reacquaintance, which was still a work in progress. He was a different boy than the one the Nazis had taken from her—at six he seemed a young person rather than a child. But he had wanted to stay with Fritz. So Benita walked alone.
On her way, she noticed a figure below—Herr Kellerman, maybe. But the person was too tall to be Kellerman and walked without a limp. As she watched, the figure became clear: it was Herr Muller. She smiled and lifted her hand. He returned the greeting, though neither of them called out. She heard nothing but the sound of the warm wind in her ears. When he finally reached her, he stopped and removed his cap.
“Are you going to Burg Lingenfels?” she asked.
He nodded.
“But it isn’t Thursday.” She lifted a hand to shield the sun from her eyes. She could smell the dust and sweat on his clothes.
“I came to give you something,” he said, reaching into his pockets. “I made these for the boys.”
In his hand he held two wooden soldiers: intriguing, roughly carved figures, each around the size of a carrot.
“They’re beautiful,” Benita said.
“Take them.” He held out his hand.
She hesitated. Marianne would not like her to accept a gift from him. She did not like Herr Muller. This much was obvious. “I don’t think—” she began. “I don’t think Frau von Lingenfels would like it.”
The smile on his face faded and he looked down the hill. Benita regretted her words. “Never mind,” she said swiftly. “She doesn’t have to know.”
Muller regarded her. “I don’t want to make trouble.”
With growing conviction, Benita smiled. She slid the soldiers into her pockets, one on each side. “They will make the boys happy.”
Herr Muller smiled back. And she felt her old self stir, the Benita who knew how to make a man smile.
Chapter Seven
Burg Lingenfels, August 1945
Marianne did not discover the toy soldiers for some time, and then only because she was looking for the cat. The animal had appeared one day outside the kitchen door, an ugly thing, half its tail missing, unbeautifully brindled. Cats were rare these days—starved, or worse. Rumor had it that people in the bombed-out cities ate them. But this one was brave and proud and unafraid. The girls fed it scraps from a bowl they left beside the kitchen steps. So now the cat was probably better fed than most of Germany’s children.
Then suddenly it stopped coming. The scraps lay in the bowl uneaten, picked over by the birds, which then twittered and shat all over the kitchen stoop. The girls were beside themselves. Stop worrying about that creature, Marianne chided them. Don’t create drama. But secretly she worried, too. There was something cheering about the cat’s pluckiness. Even Martin liked to play with it. It brought a certain lightness to their makeshift family—and its absence seemed unaccountable. It was far too pragmatic a creature to forsake such a good situation. So Marianne went looking. Perhaps it was trapped somewhere. God knows the old stables and barns were full of dangero
us rotting floorboards and menacing holes.
This was what brought her to the stable.
When she entered, she was surprised to hear Fritz and Martin. Since Martin’s accident they were forbidden to play here. She followed the sound to the back of the building and found them sprawled in a patch of sun. At her approach, they looked up guiltily, and Fritz tucked something behind his back.
“What are you doing here?” Marianne asked.
“Just playing,” Fritz said.
“With what?” She extended her hand. “May I see?”
Fritz did not move.
“Here.” It was Martin who placed his carved soldier in her palm.
Marianne frowned. The little figure was beautiful—carved with rough tools but still quite detailed, a soldier crouching with a rifle. Reluctantly, Fritz handed her his as well: a soldier standing at attention, wearing a long coat.
“They’re lovely,” she said, confused by the boys’ diffidence. “Where did you get them?”
Neither spoke.
“My mother,” Martin said finally.
“Why such long faces?” Marianne laughed. “I thought you had something terrible. Did you think you weren’t allowed to play?”
“Tante Benita said not to show you,” Fritz blurted. “She said you wouldn’t like it because Herr Muller made them.”
Marianne’s face fell. “Ah,” she said. “I see.”
In her palm, the figures suddenly seemed heavy and sharp, their forms weirdly undefined.
“Well, you have them now. I won’t take them away. But in the future—” She broke off. What did she want to say? Don’t listen to Benita? Don’t take gifts from a Nazi? Don’t hide things from me?
“In the future, you are not to visit with Herr Muller,” she finished. “Don’t—” She raised a hand at the protest she knew Fritz was forming. “I don’t want to hear your complaints.”
Marianne brooded over this all afternoon. So Benita had cast her in the role of righteous humbug, and about something you couldn’t expect two young boys to understand. And what was worse: Benita was right. Marianne didn’t approve. And Marianne didn’t want Herr Muller making things for the children. She didn’t want him working his way into their family. Benita had known that and had given the toys to the boys anyway. It was bad enough that they hung around Muller as he worked. That they spent hours in the woods watching him split wood, talking about God knows what. The man was a prisoner of war, an ex-Nazi, and she knew nothing of his character. She did not want him playing a paternal role for these fatherless boys. She had been wrong to accept his help.
It wasn’t until that evening that Marianne remembered the cat and went looking again. But like half the living creatures on the continent, it could not be found.
The following day, Marianne went to Lieutenant Peterman.
“I should have asked for Franz Muller’s file before I accepted his help,” she said, standing before the man’s cluttered desk.
Peterman looked amused.
“His file?” he said, leaning back in his chair. “Do you think we’re as organized as the Nazis?”
Marianne frowned. “Well, presumably he has filled out a Fragebogen?”
Peterman sighed and turned to one of the overstuffed cabinets behind him. He opened a drawer and began rummaging.
The Fragebogen was a questionnaire the Allied occupiers used for denazification. It consisted of six pages of questions, ranging from height and weight to membership in the Nazi Party and whether the subject had ever been involved in the destruction of Jewish property. No one thought highly of it, including the Allies. What was to stop people from lying? But Marianne saw its value—weren’t most Germans too literal and unimaginative to lie? And how else were the Allies supposed to begin sorting ordinary Mitläufer fellow travelers from true Nazi criminals? But apparently she was nearly alone in this sentiment. Even Peterman took a dim view of the forms, which were proving a great hassle for the Americans to process.
“Miraculous!” he announced, pulling a slim packet of stapled papers from the drawer. “Here it is—his Fragebogen.” He extended it to her. “For what it’s worth. God knows what people make up on these things.”
Marianne scanned the pages. Address, birthday, education (he had finished school at fourteen), party membership (joined 1942). Member of the Reserve. And then there it was. On the third page. Ordnungspolizei. District Kiel, District Mecklenburg, District Lublin.
Her eyes stuck on the word Lublin. That was where Freddy Lederer had been.
“Not good?” Peterman asked, seeing her face. “Let me see.” He took the papers from her hand and looked them over. “Not even a member of the party until ’42, probably because they made him when he was called up,” he said, flicking his finger against the page. “A nobody. I wouldn’t have sent you one of the real crazies.”
Marianne shook her head. In her mind’s eye, she saw Freddy’s face again—a sweet, unserious man, transformed by despair. The “Jewish Action” he had witnessed was carried out by a unit of the Ordnungspolizei. All those children marched into the woods holding their mothers’ hands.
Concern spread over Peterman’s face as he watched her. “Did he do something to you?”
“No.” Marianne looked at him. “But they did terrible things in Lublin.”
“Ah.” Peterman looked confused. He stared at the paper, searching for information that would clarify her response. Finding nothing, he lifted his eyes to hers. “So what do you want me to do?”
Marianne stared at him.
“Tell him to finish chopping whatever trees he has felled,” she said. “And then not to come back.”
Peterman sighed. “He’s being transferred to a French camp at the end of the month, anyway.”
Marianne leveled her gaze. “Tell him.”
Every day the American and British radio programs broadcast new and grisly stories about the Nazis and the horrors of the camps they had liberated. But almost no one listened. The citizens of Ehrenheim made excuses: they had no radios, no money for newspapers; they were too busy clearing rubble, rustling up food, mourning their dead. Or they maintained that it was all Allied propaganda. Look at how the Americans treated their German prisoners—locking them in open-air cages along the Rhine! they argued. What was the difference? Marianne was enraged by their disinterest. Didn’t they want to know what happened in the camps, especially if—as they all insisted—they didn’t already? Anyway, the idea that they had been ignorant was hogwash. Wasn’t that why the German troops had fought until the bitter end? And why the Ehrenheimers had holed up in the castle, terrified of the advancing Americans? They were afraid they would be punished for their country’s sins. Goebbels and Himmler and Hitler himself had all but spelled it out in their absurd exhortations over the past year and a half: fight until the bitter end or pay the price. For what we’ve done was implicit. They had known but not known. That was closer to the truth. That was something Marianne understood.
In any case, she and her children listened to the radio. They needed to understand what their fathers had died fighting, especially Fritz, whose sense of right and wrong was fickle at best. They listened to reports of rotting piles of bodies, gas chambers, and sadistic guards. And of the arrests of high-ranking Nazis, like Ilse Koch, the wife of the commander of Buchenwald, rumored to have turned the skin of executed Jewish prisoners into lampshades. In Lüneberg, Josef Kramer and forty-five other camp guards and workers were set to go on trial in September. Grisly pictures of camp victims ran in the papers, side by side with glamorous photos of Irma Grese, a sadistic concentration camp guard, rumored to be Kramer’s mistress.
Could you see a person’s soul in their face? Marianne and Albrecht had often argued about this. Yes, she had insisted. Didn’t you know from the moment you saw Hitler’s photograph that he was bad? Albrecht wasn’t sure. If it was so obvious, he pointed out, how did he fool the rest of Germany?
Some people are better than others at reading the signs, Mar
ianne had said with a shrug. She was half joking, half serious. The conversation came back to her when she saw the photos of Irma Grese. The image on the paper’s front page was of a woman who could have been a starlet, with her coy smile and stylish hairdo, while the mug shot inside revealed a repellant bully with a look of stupid hardness in her eyes—the same person, seen two ways. But even in the first one, if you looked closely, you could see the cruelty at the edge of her mouth, and the meanness in her gaze. And this was the version that sold papers.
In town, the Americans were showing a film: footage of the liberation of Buchenwald. Everyone was required to attend except for Opfers. Marianne went anyway. Wasn’t it her—and every German’s—responsibility? She made a demonstration out of her commitment, standing tall and solemn at the front of the line.
She already knew, of course. But it was one thing to know from documents and stories, horrifying in their own right, and another to see. When the movie began, Marianne had to dig her nails into her palms to keep from throwing up. Here on the screen were actual bodies, heaped like scraps of fabric. Here were fathers and mothers and children, starving and naked, lying in piles. Here were victims staring into the camera as individuals with all the sadness and despair of unique lives.
For all the horror of the official reports she and Albrecht had seen, with their language of “extermination” and “elimination,” they could not come close to conjuring this. How could they? There was no point of reference. Later, such footage would come to be so familiar it became unseen—a kind of placeholder for human evil. The first black-and-white glimpse of barbed wire, dirt, and nakedness cautioned viewers, Look away. But in this moment, in the first unveiling, it was like nothing she or anyone else had ever seen. And it was impossible to look away. She looked and trembled in her seat.
Exiting the theater, two girls walked in front of Marianne. Young women, really, maybe sixteen and seventeen. As they jostled through the doors in the midst of the solemn crowd, Marianne overheard them talking about silk stockings—one of them had ruined her last pair. Now where would she ever get new ones? She pouted. “Not from the Jews,” the other said, and they both giggled.
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